I. Field
The following description relates generally to wireless communications, and more particularly to searching for cells in a wireless communication system.
II. Background
Wireless communication systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication; for instance, voice and/or data can be provided via such wireless communication systems. A typical wireless communication system, or network, can provide multiple users access to one or more shared resources (e.g., bandwidth, transmit power, . . . ). For instance, a system can use a variety of multiple access techniques such as Frequency Division Multiplexing (FDM), Time Division Multiplexing (TDM), Code Division Multiplexing (CDM), 3GPP LTE systems, Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM), and others.
Generally, wireless multiple-access communication systems can simultaneously support communication for multiple mobile devices. Each mobile device can communicate with one or more base stations via transmissions on forward and reverse links. The forward link (or downlink) refers to the communication link from base stations to mobile devices, and the reverse link (or uplink) refers to the communication link from mobile devices to base stations. This communication link can be established via a single-in-single-out, multiple-in-signal-out, or a multiple-in-multiple-out (MIMO) system.
For instance, a MIMO system can employ multiple (NT) transmit antennas and multiple (NR) receive antennas for data transmission. A MIMO channel formed by the NT transmit and NR receive antennas can be decomposed into NS independent channels, which are also referred to as spatial channels, where NS≦min{NT, NR}. Each of the NS independent channels can correspond to a dimension. The MIMO system can provide improved performance (e.g., higher throughput and/or greater reliability) if the additional dimensionalities created by the multiple transmit and receive antennas are utilized.
A MIMO system can support a time division duplex (TDD) and frequency division duplex (FDD) systems. In a TDD system, the forward and reverse link transmissions can be on the same frequency region so that the reciprocity principle allows the estimation of the forward link channel from the reverse link channel. This can enable the access point to extract transmit beamforming gain on the forward link when multiple antennas are available at the access point
Wireless communication systems oftentimes employ one or more base stations that provide a coverage area. A typical base station can transmit multiple data streams for broadcast, multicast and/or unicast services, wherein a data stream may be a stream of data that can be of independent reception interest to a mobile device. A mobile device within the coverage area of such base station can be employed to receive one, more than one, or all the data streams carried by the composite stream. Likewise, a mobile device can transmit data to the base station or another mobile device.
A base station can also be referred to as a cell. When searching for a cell among a plurality of cells in a communication system (e.g., OFDM system), a mobile device can desire to detect information, such as Primary Synchronization Channels (PSCs) and Secondary Synchronization Channels (SSCs), generated by respective cells to facilitate locating and synchronizing with a cell to facilitate communication between the cell and the mobile device. It is desirable to be able to quickly search and locate a desired cell within a communication system.